[Chainmail]

No kidding - the Russians are idiots; they knew what the Ukraine's terrain was like, they knew that the Ukrainians had been outfitted with advanced antitank missiles (thank you, Mr. Trump) and attack drones and they knew that the place was a sea of mud anyplace but the main roads.

Yet they sent armored thrusts into that mess and lost thousands of conscripts and hundreds of vehicles to the well-known threats.

Did they really think that the Ukrainians would cheer their arrival? Did they really believe that the Ukrainian army would just fold like wet Kleenex?

All of those hapless conscripts have mothers, and every one of those mothers will make themselves known when they learn that they have lost their children for Putin's land grab.

[NorseViking]

After 20 days the Ukrainian Army indeed mostly collapsed. As for the Russian losses, slash the Ukrainian claims by 10 and that is going to be an unrealistically high figure.

[woodbutcher1963]

I am not a military expert. I am sure there are others on this board that could explain this better than me. I will try.

The Russian air force sucks.
They do not have nearly the same amount of training and support that the USAF/Marines/Navy pilots have. They have some good equipment. They do not spend enough hours training how to effectively use it.

They fired 300 +/- missills into Ukraine. They needed to follow that with fixed wing airstrikes to destroy the remaining mobile antiaircraft units. They did not. So, their aircraft will continue to get picked off one at a time. They should have established air superiority. They did not.

Any FReeper with air defense experience please feel free to correct anything I am wrong about.